In most Catholic and Protestant theological writings of the Reformation, we do not encounter efforts to nuance or move beyond medieval depictions of Islam. With the extension of the Ottoman Empire into Europe and the fracturing of Western Christianity in the Reformation, older medieval constructs of Islam are redeployed to respond to new circumstances. However, the underlying fear in Christian Europe remains the same—fear of the power and expansion of Islamic territories. It is only with the period known as the Enlightenment that we witness some of these fears subside, even if temporarily, while more significant efforts to depict Islam sympathetically come to the fore.

QUESTION: How exactly did Enlightenment-era writers manage to depict Islam sympathetically where Reformation authors could not? What structural or intellectual shifts enabled this?

Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Intro…, loc. 157